ABU-DIS Observers: Roni H., Nora O, Dvorah G. (reporter) and a visitor from SwitzerlandAn object lesson in how a Palestinian family really lives, or rather contrives to survive, a glimpse of the Via Dolorosa that lies below the monstrous eight-metre high “security wall” that is cutting this township in two like some latter-day Berlin Wall. En route to Qalandiya, our usual Tuesday assignment, we had decided to make what we thought would be a short detour to Abu-Dis where the building of the wall is causing new and ever graver problems. It can be seen rearing upwards as one descends the hill from Bethphage: at the feet of the huge, ugly, menacing, gray concrete slabs, the workmen look like dwarfs. Even the crane seems inadequate to its task. The attitude of the Border Police is made immediately obvious: “You can look all you want, but don’t interfere with our work!” What we want to do by now is visit Terry Bolatta, principal of a local school and a woman well-known to many Machsomwatchers. We met her as we came down the hill. She had had to leave her car near the gate (her home is next door to the hotel on the opposite hill) and was plainly anxious about meeting her two small daughters off the school bus. Would we come and have a cup of coffee and hear of her problems with the BP. Making such a visit would seem a simple enough matter: one follows the road under the wall and up the hill, past the Hospice to the hotel at the top, five or six minutes walk… But the road, never in the best shape, is now a sea of mud, churned up and scarred by the bulldozers and other heavy construction equipment. The BP let no one pass: the construction work makes walking here dangerous. The idea that perhaps one could wait for five or ten minutes until the crane stops (which it does periodically) does not occur to them. No one thought to rope off a walk way on the far side of the road that would have made access possible for all. We climb down steep steps through someone’s back yard, stumbling and slipping in the pouring rain. At one point, the steps give out and there is a chunk of wood with slats nailed roughly across that has to be negotiated. Turn left, and we are back to the road leading to the hotel. But the BP are here too. We try another tack, but whichever way we go we are blocked. We phone Helmut from the Hospice for aid or guidance. He reports that his Hospice for elderly and terminally sick people is totally cut off. Somehow he has arranged for the contractor building the wall (!) to deliver food. Terry explains by phone that we must backtrack to the petrol station, cross into the eastern sector of the township and walk up from that side — a far longer, and, in the torrential rain, an even more difficult and dangerous way. Palestinians that we pass point bitterly to the wall and say: “That’s not going to bring peace, it’s just going to breed more suicide bombers.” A glimpse towards the mosque at the top shows BP presence again. We wind around the shell of the Palestinian Parliament building and finally arrive. The BP stationed outside Terry’s home are none too friendly. But they do not interfere. Indoors, Terry (a blue ID card holder) explains that she has to take her daughters to their music classes in East Jerusalem. She and her family have been unable to use the road outside their home since work started on the wall there at the beginning of the week. The work goes on day and night, round the clock. No arrangements have been made for their normal coming and going. No one knows how long this is to last. And when it finishes: “We are told that there will be two gates in the wall — one near Bethphage where the road is dangerously narrow, windy and steep, and the other near the university.” Apparently no gate is scheduled for the obvious spot, the centre of the township near the petrol station. Terry has rowed with the BP every day: ” Do they think I am a monkey that they tell me to climb over the wall and go round that way. They have made me move my car. They have interrupted our electricity supply every day as they separate the power supply for east and west Abu-Dis, and as a result we now have no hot water and no one will come out and mend the boiler. How am I to bathe the kids? How am I to take them to their class, over all that rubble that you just came through, and in the dark, too! Every time I come and go from my own home I have this dreadful hassle! I have my life to to live!” Ronni calls Gad’an Safadi, operations commander of the Jerusalem area BP. She explains the situation and corrects his assertion that everything is just fine around the petrol station. He asks to speak to Terry. She launches into a vigorous tirade the upshot of which is that Safadi is an important man and she is just a headmistress. Both must, however reluctantly, accept the wall as a given, but there is no need for his forces to make her life and the lives of her family a misery. They can be polite and reasonable. They can show some human respect. Both sides have to get through this difficult time together. Safadi says he will speak to his men, that the work will be completed on Thursday (the BP on the spot hope that it may be finished by the end of the week, with luck).Outside, the BP in charge insists on contacting Safadi himself. The order comes through: reluctantly he tells us that this evening is an exception. Terry and the children may go and come back. But tomorrow, there will be no way through, and if Terry dares “to be rude” to them, “if she acts up tomorrow as she did today, and just for the TV cameras that were here!”, he solemnly assures us he will have her arrested and clapped into prison. (Her mother is due to be hospitalized tomorrow. Tomorrow, her French guest is due to leave for home, and must get herself and her luggage to Lod airport). We slip and stumble down the road lighting our way with flashlights. The little girls are excited and wave as they scramble into the car and off to their classes. Later Terry calls to thank us and say what a difference our presence made to the children. At least tonight they did not have to watch their mother argue and plead, at least tonight the soldiers let them walk down their own street.